China's Battle to Police the Web

What_the_deuce writes "For the first time in years, internet browsers are able to visit the BBC's website. In turn, the BBC turns a lens on the Chinese web-browsing experience, exploring one of the government's strongest methods of controlling the communication and information accessible to the public. 'China does not block content or web pages in this way. Instead the technology deployed by the Chinese government, called Golden Shield, scans data flowing across its section of the net for banned words or web addresses. There are five gateways which connect China to the internet and the filtering happens as data is passed through those ports. When the filtering system spots a banned term it sends instructions to the source server and destination PC to stop the flow of data.'"

Comcast???

[Shakrai]

When the filtering system spots a banned term it sends instructions to the source server and destination PC to stop the flow of data.'

Comcast has service in China???

Re:SSL? Freenet?

[iminplaya]

I'm pretty impressed that they have the ability to scan the data in the first place. That must not be cheap, or easy.

Good old American knowhow always gets you through the day.

Re:SSL? Freenet?

[Anonymous Coward]

That must not be cheap, or easy.

How dare they destroy Chinese culture!

Re:SSL? Freenet?

[IkeTo]

My understanding is that those the Chinese government really afraid of are those "naive" users. So if you display that you are not in this (major, at least that's what they'd think) set of users, say by using encryption, they no longer bother.

Re:encryption?

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Unfortunately there are a few orders of magnitude in the difference of power between the Chinese government and the RIAA.

That may be true at the moment, but the Chinese are catching up pretty quickly.